“There is No Scene Here” Looking at Emma’s Dilemma (Henry Hills, 2012) by Cornelia Barber To look is to be curious, to be interested, to lower yourself. No one you look at is worth it. Looking is always demeaning. The word conversation is banished. I think that’s what best conveys the...

Belle: A New View of Eighteenth-Century Racism by Danielle Bobker Belle (2013), directed by Amma Asante and written by Misan Sagay, tells stories that are by turns deeply familiar and completely fresh. You need only to have read a Jane Austen (1775-1817) novel or two, or seen any of the movie adaptations, to guess the...

‘The lonely man’ film is a term that I learned from writer/director Paul Schrader when he introduced Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver at the Royal Theatre in Toronto in 2013. Schrader penned the film during a deep and paranoid depressive state. As a woman, I identify with Travis Bickle’s awkwardness with social constructs, his isolation, and...

Why we love Paolo Sorrentino’s This Must Be the Place M. “Why we love This Must Be the Place” is a pretty good title for our discussion of Paolo Sorrentino’s 2011 film. I’m glad you floated it. Trying to articulate why we love a particular book or poem or movie is often what we, as...